Art, education and language

Main menu

3d Printing in the classroom

I don’t normally write a post that is not much more than a request for information, but……

Along with a couple of colleagues, I am looking into the viability and practicalities of running some new projects that will involve some three dimensional design elements and (we hope) some 3d printing. My own experience with 3d printing is minimal, but I’m sure that with a little research that shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

However I am very interested to hear from others about the practicalities of 3d printing in a classroom context. The pupils involved would be in the 14-15 year old age group. If you do have some experience in this area, positive or negative I would love to hear feedback on points such as:

favourite printers and why?

running costs

favourite software

potential technical ‘issues’

the practicalities of a large class and a single printer

Any thoughts on whether to ‘out source’ the actual 3d printing to commercial companies rather than doing it ourselves would also be interesting to hear, although loosing the ‘magical’ quality of doing it in the classroom would of course be lost.